Ha HA! This has been my favourite photo since it was first posted a couple years ago! Thank you soooooo much for the repeater. I also agree with Sher, no two such adorable creatures could create a pandemic. Must have been spiders…

Auntie Mame — actually, in some journalistic circles, the sentence ending punctuation ALWAYS goes inside the quotes. (I’m not vouching for the logic of why, I’m just saying that I was taught very explicitly by my masters-in-journalism parents that such was the case once upon a not so long ago).

As a journalist, I can attest that according to the AP style of writing…the punctuation goes inside the quotes. Even when I’m not writing in AP style, I keep writing in AP style because I am so used to it, that it seems extremely unnatural to me that the punctuation would be on the outside of a quote.

Also, this photo? *shudder* I know I did my fair share of gross things, but I’d never do that.

I thought the punctuation was supposed to be in the quotations no matter what, but it just didn’t look right. I haven’t had to do AP style in almost 10 years, so I wasn’t very confident with my memory of it. Thanks guys for clearing it up for me!

brinnann, for what it’s worth, I think you got it right the first time. As I recall, periods and commas go inside the quotation marks, but the rules are a little different when it comes to question marks and exclamation points (and semicolons, I believe). For example, if I wanted to confirm I heard something correctly, I might pose the following question:

Did you say “snuggle” or “snorgle”?

Or, if I was impressed by a particular post, I might exclaim:

OMG LOL @ “porksickie”!!!!1

Disclaimer: I’m not a professional writer, but I did grow up with an English-major mom.🙂

Tricia – While I can understand being sad over the mass pig slaughter, the animals were going to meet that fate soon anyway, flu or no flu. To me, that’s the real sad fact. The flu scare just accelerated the inevitable for those doomed animals, which may not be such a bad thing.

Any sentence-ending punctuation in this case goes outside the quotation marks, because it punctuates the whole sentence (question). The question mark isn’t part of the quoted phrase. If the whole question were in quotation marks, the question mark would go inside. Auntie Mame got it right the first time.

“I was licking pigs in all the wrong places,
Licking pigs in too many faces,
Searching their eyes, licking for traces,
Of what.. I’m dreaming of…
Hopin’ to find a friend and a lover,
God bless the day I discover,
Another pig, lickin’ for love.”

I think this is my favorite CO post of all time! I had it as my desktop at one point, and every time I worked in a coffee shop or anywhere in public, people would notice it right away and say, “What is THAT??!?” It’s good to have a desktop image that makes you laugh every time you turn on your computer!

First of all, let’s remind ourselves that the “rules” of grammar are fluid and variable between countries and eras, not set down by God almighty. Journalists learn certain rules, academics learn certain rules, and while they mostly overlap, in the area of punctuation and commas there has always been disagreement. For example, trained as a journalist and by journalists, I was always, always, ALWAYS, taught to use the terminal comma in a series of objects, as in:

“My cat likes catnip, nomming, napping, and the occasional snorgle.”

However, my dissertation committee chair demands that I not use the terminal comma, which would look like:

“My cat likes catnip, nomming, napping and the occasional snorgle.”

It has taken me two years of writing my dissertation to break myself of the journalistic terminal comma habit, and I still think, following a pattern of speech, that the terminal comma is desirable.

Similarly, my parents taught me about the punctuation always (with some exceptions for quotes within quotes, etc.) goes inside the quotation marks. I understand the “logic” of the opposite, as Starlinguk says.

But I offer the following logic: a question mark, exclamation point, and period all indicate the end of a sentence. In fact, the “period” (dot) is what indicates the full stop/pause, particularly for the purposes of speech. Commas and semi-colons are half-stops or single beats, periods are full stops or double beats. (Beginning actors learn how to decode Shakespeare’s verse this way).

If the period is placed within the quotation marks, then it logically follows that the exclamation point and question mark should as well. While they indicate emphasis on the part of the speaker/writer (and/or the presence of an interrogative), they functionally are no different from what happens with a period.

I have found with students, in fact, that they almost always place the periods and commas OUTSIDE the quotes, because they have been taught that the “quote” is separate from the “sentence.” It’s a pain in the butt to correct them, and it’s much easier to correct them by telling them to put all punctuation inside the quotes.

I’m not saying that I practice the RIGHT way, I’m just saying it’s what I was taught and there is a logic to it. I don’t think there is a “right” way, just like there is no “right” way to spell the word “color” or “honor,” it just varies depending on which side of the pond you grew up on.

“And what about interspecies snorgling?”
And what about “interspecies snorgling”?
“And what about ‘interspecies snorgling’?”

Say we are quoting someone asking about the phrase. Would you write:
“And what about ‘interspecies snorgling?’ ” I don’t think so.

I do understand about rules being fluid and all, but it just doesn’t make any sense to me to put the end punctuation of the whole sentence inside with the quoted phrase, as though it is part of the phrase.

Politically, I embrace the descriptive view of grammar and usage, while personally I still cling to the prescriptive, despite James Miller’s best efforts back at Harvard.

@Berthaservant – Thank you for the grammar instruction. However, I can’t get past the phrase “terminal comma”!!! As you can see, I also learned to place the punctuation outside quotation marks. Now I am afriad I am making numerous errors, such as overusing the exclaimation point!! I tend to overuse punctuation in general and ALWAYS use the “terminal comma”. I guess that kills my sentence.

Britt, LOL. If we must have a grammar discussion, let’s at least review the differences between “there, they’re, and their,” as well as “your and you’re.” I see these examples misused frequently. Present company excepted, of course. Cute Overloader’s never make such mistakes!

Eww on the picture, btw. Cute, but Eww. Hey, perhaps that could be a new category?

My parents claim that this is, in fact, me when I was two years old. In a way I believe them, because I certainly did look like that when I was that age. In another way I refuse to believe it because my 16 year old sensibilities tell me that this is horrible black mail. I won’t believe that it was me until I see the original photo or the original negative….

REALLY BAD! My niece was that age when she did that and got ‘farm disease’ where she got a fever and lovely green blisters all over the inside of her mouth. Not cute NOT CUTE—well, seperately they are both adorable!!